Here Are the Best Books on Gardening in the Winter

Our Top Winter Gardening Book Recommendations

I know some gardeners are ready to put the garden into hibernation mode for the winter and take a couple (well-deserved) months off. For me, growing into the colder months is what saves me from the winter doldrums. I try to push my garden as late into winter as possible and then start planting again the second the soil in my raised beds is workable.

If you're not ready to put your garden into hibernation mode either, then check out my book recommendations below. You'll find all you need to extend your season into December, January, and February.

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The Best Books on Winter Gardening

• The Complete Guide to Growing Microgreens
• The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live
• Kitchen Garden Revival: A modern guide to creating a stylish, small-scale, low-maintenance, edible garden
• Backyard Winter Gardening: Vegetables Fresh and Simple, in Any Climate Without Artificial Heat or Electricity the Way It's Been Done for 2,000 Years
• The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouse
• How to Grow Winter Vegetables
• Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables

The Best Book on Indoor Gardening Over Winter

The Complete Guide to Growing Microgreens Ebook by Nicole Johnsey Burke

We moved to Chicago right in the middle of a brutal winter, and I felt like I'd suddenly been dropped in the North Pole. I wasn't just missing my garden back in Houston but the ability I'd had there to grow outdoors year round. Fortunately for my sanity, this is around the same time I discovered the joys of growing your own microgreens and sprouts indoors.

Now, when my garden is covered in snow and I won't be able to have basil growing outdoors for another 6 months, I can still be snipping my own fresh basil leaves indoors.

You, too, can grow these incredibly fast but rewarding little plants in the comfort of your own home no matter how many inches of snow have fallen outside. You'll use growlights for your microgreens (and you don't need any light source at all for sprouts), so you can even set up and get growing in your basement or kitchen.

I put together this ebook after growing my own microgreens for several years. It covers the best microgreens varieties to grow, the supplies you'll need, how to plant your seeds, how to tend your microgreens, and how to harvest. It also covers sprouts.

Download your copy of the microgreens ebook.

The Best Winter Gardening Book from a Cold-Weather Gardener

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour

Niki Jabbour grows in Nova Scotia, so she knows a thing or two about gardening in a cold climate. She stretches her growing season to be year round using some simple techniques that she breaks down in this book, including using inexpensive structures like cold frames to protect crops from frost.

Her book also covers how to choose the right vegetable varieties for growing over winter in your climate and even some basic planting techniques like succession planting.

Shop this book.

My Favorite Gardening Book for Any Climate

Kitchen Garden Revival by Nicole Johnsey Burke

My first book teaches you how to understand the different growing seasons in your climate and figure out which plants will grow best in each season.

After gardening in many different climates, I realized that the hardiness zones and conventional wisdom didn't help me out all that much when I was trying to figure out what was possible in my area. Zones really just give you information about your first and last frost dates. This leads a lot of beginner gardeners to think they can only grow between certain dates. Even some gardeners in warmer climates like Houston think they have to shut down their gardens each winter, which is just not true.

This book will help you understand what's possible in your area during your winter months. You might be able to grow certain plants without protection if you don't experience a true cold season in the garden. In Houston, I planted, tended, and harvested my garden all winter long. In fact, that was my prime salad garden season. The rest of you might be able to grow certain plants under protection for year-round harvests.

My major focus is growing in raised beds, which actually keep your soil warmer longer than in the ground. This helps you to grow longer and start sooner. No matter your situation, you'll learn how to set your garden up and plant for your unique climate.

Shop Kitchen Garden Revival.

The Best Book on Winterizing Garden Beds

Backyard Winter Gardening by Caleb Warnock

This is a pretty quick read that teaches you how to grow well into the dead of winter using frost protection like cold frames, hot frames, and partially underground greenhouses. Don't worry—the book has step-by-step guides showing you how to make your own frames and mini greenhouses. No artificial heat source or electricity required.

Warnock gives you lots of interesting context for how people would have grown crops into winter hundreds of years ago to survive.

The book also gives you tips for overwintering certain crops and keeping root crops in the ground until you're ready to harvest them.

Definitely a must read for those who wish to garden in the winter in a colder climate!

The Best Book on Winter Gardening in a Greenhouse

The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman

This book recommendation is ideal for small farmers and homesteaders—those of you who want to be able to grow large quantities of crops in the winter. Coleman is all about small-scale sustainable farming using season-extending techniques.

Coleman's book covers how to use unheated or minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses to grow your favorite crops throughout even the coldest of winter months.

Inside, you'll find a detailed step-by-step guide to building and maintaining your own greenhouse structure. He also includes how-to guides for building cold frames, high tunnels (also called hoop houses), and mobile greenhouses. Basically, pick your structure, and this book's got the info for you to build it. Would you like a root cellar to go with your greenhouse? This book covers that too!

Coleman also includes detailed planting schedules, crop management, and even marketing methods for those of you who'd like to grow commercially.

The Most Useful Resource for How to Plan Your Winter Garden

How to Grow Winter Vegetables by Charles Dowding

This is among the best gardening books for beginners thanks to its focus on timing. Dowding, an organic gardening expert, has created an organized manual that includes month-by-month guides for what to sow, plant, and grow each month and how to store your harvests for winter.

You'll also find information on simple techniques like fleece and garden cloches to cover your plants and prolong your gardening experience.

If you love homegrown salad greens, Dowding has an entire section on how to grow frost-hardy salad plants.

The Best Book to Help You Enjoy Your Winter Harvests

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

This isn't a gardening book, but I still consider it essential reading for any gardener. It changed the way I view my garden harvests and how I prepare food for my family. McFadden is a chef who learned how to use every part of the plant while working at a farm-to-table restaurant.

In this book, McFadden talks about how veggies change throughout their growing seasons and how you can best enjoy them at each stage. You'll find your new favorite recipes for sautés, pan roasts, braises, and stews for all your winter fruits and vegetables.

Shop Six Seasons here.

Keep Growing This Winter

I hope this encourages you to keep growing this winter instead of putting your garden down for a long winter's rest. Grab one of these books and be prepared to grow more than you ever thought possible in your garden this winter.

My goal is to help everyone grow more in 2024, and one simple way I can make this happen is by encouraging people to grow past their first frost date and plant before their last frost date. Thanks for being here and making gardening ordinary.